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Catholic and Support Gay Marriage? No Communion for You!

The leader of the Detroit Archdiocese has said that if Catholic congregants support same-sex marriage they should be denied Communion, and he’s not alone in that thinking.

The Archbishop of Detroit Allen Vigneron on Sunday told the Detroit Free Press that he agrees with a senior Catholic lawyer that those who support same-sex marriage should be denied Communion. Vigneron reportedly told the Free Press:

“For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: ‘I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches.’ In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one’s integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.”

For a number of years now, senior Catholic figures have threatened public officials, like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, with a denial of Communion over issues like pro-choice reforms, and now increasingly, this is applied to the issue of same-sex marriage.

Vigneron’s comments chase those of Edward Peters, a lawyer and adviser to the Vatican who teaches Catholic canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and who, in a blog post last month, wrote:

“The Catholic Church teaches, through its ordinary magisterium and with infallible certainty, that marriage exists only between one man and one woman [...] Catholics who promote “same-sex marriage” act contrary to Canon 209 § 1 and should not approach for holy Communion per Canon 916. Depending on the facts of the case, they also risk having holy Communion withheld from them under Canon 915, being rebuked under Canon 1339 § 2, and/or being sanctioned under Canon 1369 for gravely injuring good morals.”

Peters goes on to say those engaging in a same-sex marriage or those who have helped facilitate a same-sex marriage could also be barred from Communion.

The archbishop’s focal point here is not “gay marriage”; it is a Catholic’s reception of Holy Communion. If a Catholic publicly opposes the church on a serious matter of the church’s teaching, any serious matter — for example, whether it be a rejection of the divinity of Christ, racist beliefs, support for abortion or support for redefining marriage — that would contradict the public affirmation they would make of the church’s beliefs by receiving Communion.

As the archbishop states, the pastors of the church are ready to assist Catholics to help them understand and avoid this conflict.

Vigneron called Catholics supporting same-sex marriage tantamount to perjury. You don’t get to throw around words like that and then pretend, as Kohn does above, that there’s no argument to be fought.

Now an initial reaction to this might be that the position, while odious, is perfectly within the realm of religious freedom of expression and that the church can define its own rules however it sees fit. Fine. Move on. Except that while in some circumstances that is true, there’s a problem here, isn’t there?

Increasingly, a majority of Catholic congregants support, if not same-sex marriage in the religious sense, marriage equality in the secular and legal sense. A recent poll says that support has now surpassed the majority mark at 54%. When asked about this, they often cite their religious beliefs. An example would be the aforementioned Nancy Pelosi, who has said her faith and her self-avowed relationship with God compels her to oppose discrimination.

So what of a religious right to express that aspect of one’s faith by supporting same-sex marriage?

Well, it seems the Catholic church is dealing with this by defining those people out of being Catholic and denying them Holy Communion, a key pillar for Catholic identity.

Technically the church can do whatever it wants in that regard, but one thing is certain. With positions like this, the church could shed support in swathes and elegantly marginalize itself in only a matter of decades because what the church thinks it means to be Catholic really doesn’t seem to be what its congregants think Catholicism is, and this is a possibly fatal disconnect.

In the short term at least, it makes the church’s staunch cries about how we must protect religious rights and rally against marriage equality sound even more hollow.

Cafemom TOS:
"If you must "vent" your feelings about another CafeMom member, do it without identifying her. Don't use her screen name or any other information that is likely to make her recognizable to other members."

You are sadly oblivious to what you have done many times in this group by not using the goodness you were born with.

Your need to fit in, riding on the fence spiritually, "loving everyone" (your words) will be your undoing, unless you make a firm decision to follow God 100%.

You are not at peace, you are like a boat tossing in the sea.

Veronica

Quoting Mommy_of_Riley:

FYI.

Cafemom TOS:
"If you must "vent" your feelings about another CafeMom member, do it without identifying her. Don't use her screen name or any other information that is likely to make her recognizable to other members."

1 Corinthians 6:9: .....Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals.

You unbelievers who yearn to hear about love, here it is:

If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love.

John 15:10

He that loves his life shall lose it; and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

John 12:25

If the world hate you, know that it hated me before it hated you.

John 15:18

I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

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